After losing nine of ten games, Bears move forward without top scorer Bourque

Saturday night against a very good Charlotte Checkers team the Bears got off to a 3-0 early lead. The Checkers battled back to tie the game and even take the lead at one point. Back and forth battling would lead to a 5-5 tie game that would add five extra minutes of overtime. Overtime went scoreless, and the Bears would head to the shootout where they have been, well, unfortunately week all season. The Bears would pull out a 6-5 behind Vitek Vanecek in the nets. Personally Vitek Vanecek has taken over the number one role between the pipes even with Pheonix Copley receiving more games so far.

The Bears would follow up the next night with a horrible first period leading to five goals in the first period leading to Pheonix Copley being yanked from the nets in favor of Vitek Vanecek. The Bears would hold the Checkers scoreless the rest of the game, however only got two goals from Barber, and Graovac to fall 5-2 at the Giant Center.

Looking ahead at the weekend the Bears now have a bit of a favorable weekend to take at least two of the three games. The problem standing in their way…Leading scorer for the team, and the AHL will be playing for a different team representing team USA in the 2018 winter Olympics. The Bears will now need to find scoring from all four lines, and not just expect scoring from the top line, and a bottom five powerplay that has struggled lately. Saturday Hershey’s powerplay went 3-5, but was the first time with a multiple goal effort from the powerplay since back on November eleventh. Chris Bourque and Travis Boyd’s 20 power play points are tied for third in the American Hockey League. It will now be Travis Boyd, Riley Barber and most likely big bodied forward Matias Bau that will need to step up on the powerplay going forward.